beginning steps to building my cnc

[njhussey]

Thanx For your help Neil,

That would be very useful and helpful,

I think the best way would be to design the cnc with help, and learn from the forum with help from people like you. Thanx again much appreciated.

I think that's by far the best way as not only will you be able to service it, repair it and upgrade it yourself easily but you'll get a far better understanding of how it works.

My budget is about a £1000 and i would like it to be a stable machine dont really want too many problems in the long run as i would be using it for work. Would be nice if I can cut aluminium, mdf, ply, composits and acrylic sheets.

Thats about all of it really,

For that you should be able to get a CNC machine that will be able to do what you want it to...will be tight but doable from what I've seen

I will re attempt some design work today based on the information you gave me and see how I can implement it in to the design. I hope by doing this I have a perfectly designed and well understood cnc machine :-)

Thanx again

That's it...before you know it you'll be hooked and forever tweaking it or planning your next build ;)

[kingcreaky]

You need to read... ALL OF THE BUILD LOGS. from start to finish. You'll need some strong coffee.

Dont take anything I say as gospel, as im just learning. but you'll see for yourself designing it is key. You want to draw a proper 3d model. for this download google sketchip 'aka Trimble' its free and there are plenty of tutorials all over the internet.

When your reading the build logs you'll see the amount of thought that goes into designing against 'flex' or 'deflection' and 'vibration' all of these factors need a lot of thinking about right from the start of your design. after you have seen a few designs evolve from the original concept ideas the following versions to the final versions you can see how the strength of the design improves.

Worry last about the electronics, as its only after you have made a design to suit your requirements that a guage on the size of electronics is possible.

for cheaper gear, with less support, chai is reliable http://stores.ebay.co.uk/linearmotionbearings
for better service, with good support, you want zapp Zapp Automation Ltd

good luck with your build. Youtube is a good source of videos :D